Best Award Search Tools

By booking award flights and award stays through the right programs, you can find excellent deals that allow you to stretch the value of your points and miles as far as possible. However, finding the best flight or hotel room often requires searching multiple frequent-flyer programs, which takes a lot of time and a fair amount of expertise. Luckily, there are a variety of award search tools that can make this process a whole lot faster and easier.

Typically, the way that these award search tools work is that they require you to enter your origin, destination, a range of preferred travel dates and the credit card, hotel or airline program whose rewards you wish to use. Then, you’ll be shown the cheapest way to book a flight or hotel stay that matches your criteria with points or miles. These kinds of tools can save you a ton of time searching and a ton of points or miles on your airfare.

However, keep in mind that none of the award search tools are 100% perfect. Certain tools may omit flight results from certain airlines and may not have the necessary features to find the best possible award flight. For this reason, we still recommend conducting your own award searches even after using an award search tool.

Nevertheless, these award search tools are a great place to start your award search process. So, let’s look at which of these award search tools are the best and how you can use them to find great redemptions.

Comparing Popular Award Search Tools

Each award search tool has its own set of unique advantages and disadvantages. Some of these tools display flights only from certain airlines or hotel stays from certain hotel chains. Some tools have interfaces that are easier to use than others. And some tools offer many more features to users for free than others.

So, in the following sections, we’re going to examine some of the most popular award search tools according to the aforementioned criteria and more.

PointsYeah

One of the most popular award search tools is PointsYeah, largely because this website offers a ton of great features even in its free version. The user interface is also straightforward, making it easy to find the perfect redemption. Unfortunately, the website seems to have a slower loading time than some of its competitors.

You also can access a paid version of PointsYeah for $99.99 per year, which comes with added features such as more active price alerts and the ability to search a greater range of dates at once. However, the free version truly has all of the features that you need to conduct a successful award search.

To use PointsYeah, you’ll need to sign up for a free account. Then, start by selecting the type of award that you’re looking for (either hotel stay or award flight). Enter all of the necessary information for your desired flight or hotel stay, such as your travel dates, origin, destination, cabin class, number of travelers or room type.

You can also filter the results by bank program. This is super helpful for finding flights or hotel stays available with your current balances of credit card points.

For instance, if you have a balance of American Express Membership Rewards points and Citi ThankYou Points, you could choose to search for only flights or hotels that are available with these types of points.

You also have the option to search for particular frequent-flyer programs or hotel reward programs. This option could be helpful if you want to get good value for your credit card points or you want to book with a specific hotel or airline.

For instance, since Air Canada Aeroplan and Air France-KLM Flying Blue tend to offer high value on average, you may want to search for redemptions through these programs only.

Once you’ve clicked the search button (or the “Yeah!” button on PointsYeah), you’ll see a list of results that match your search query and the option to filter these results even further by a number of factors, including maximum number of points, maximum taxes, maximum duration of flight, type of aircraft, hotel brand and more.

There are also three other tabs on the PointsYeah homepage:Flight Deals, Hotel Collection and Daydream Accelerator.

The Flight Deals option allows you to search large geographic areas (for instance, flights from the United States to anywhere) and see all of the best flight deals within those regions.

Similarly, the Hotel Collection tab includes recommended hotel stays and allows you to search for a city, geographic region or landmark and will recommend the best hotel deals in that area.

The Daydream Accelerator is just a list of recommended credit cards with which you can earn points toward your next flight or hotel award.

While the free version of PointYeah allows you to search for all flights and hotel stays within a four-day period, purchasing the premium version of PointsYeah gives you the ability to search during an eight-day period at once. Having said that, if you’re using a free version, you could just search for flights or hotels within a four-day period and then run another search for the four-day period after that (essentially giving you access to an eight-day period).

The free version of PointsYeah also comes with four active price alerts for flights and four active price alerts for hotels, which track the points prices of flights or hotels over time and alert you if prices change. If you upgrade to the premium version, you’ll be entitled to 32 active price alerts for flights and 15 active price alerts for hotels.

In general, PointsYeah offers all you need to find outstanding deals on award travel. If you want to receive more price alerts, you can upgrade to the premium version for $99.99 per year, but we don’t think there’s a need for that.

One thing to note about PointsYeah is that it doesn’t give you the option to search for multiple origins or destinations at once when searching on the Flights tab. If you want to search for award flights from multiple origins or to multiple destinations, you’ll need to go to the Flight Deals tab. You also can search for flights to Anywhere on this tab or to a specific country or continent.

AwardTool

AwardTool is another excellent award search tool that offers plenty of free features. The user interface is also easy to comprehend, and the website is impressively fast. Without creating an account, you can view the first few results for any award search. However, if you want to see the full list of results, you’ll need to create a free account and sign in. This account is actually 100% free, but once you sign up, you’ll receive marketing emails from AwardTool (which you can always mark as spam if you like).

There’s also a premium version of this service called “Award Tool PRO” that you can access for $10.99 per month or $84.99 per year. The free version has everything that you need to find the perfect award flight or hotel stay, including access to 90 days of route data, the ability to search a four-day period, three free award alerts and more. However, the premium version does come with some added features, including two prioritized route requests, 25 award alerts, unlimited access to yearly hotel data and unlimited access to flight deals.

Still, we recommend just staying with the free version unless you want more award alerts and you plan on using AwardTool often. With a free account, you can search for either flights or hotels by entering your travel information, such as your origin, destination, number of travelers, travel dates, cabin class and type of flight.

It’s also worth noting that you can enter multiple destinations or multiple origins if, for example, you’re willing to fly into either Seattle (SEA) or Portland, Oregon (PDX). This can be a helpful feature if you’re willing to reposition to find a cheaper award flight, or you’re trying to decide between different destinations and you want to compare flight prices.

Once you’ve clicked the search button, you’ll be presented with a list of options that matches your search query. Again, you won’t be able to view the full list of results unless you’re signed into an account. On this page, you’ll have the option to filter your results even further by a number of factors, including credit card rewards programs (such as Capital One Rewards or Citi ThankYou Rewards), frequent-flyer programs, number of stops, maximum number of points and more.

These filters are extremely helpful for finding an award flight or award stay that you can afford. Let’s say that you currently have a balance of 40,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. You can filter results for only Chase Ultimate Rewards and set your maximum number of points to 40,000, and AwardTool will only display results within your range.

AwardTool also has a helpful “Panorama” feature for individuals who need inspiration for their travel plans or want to let prices dictate their travel plans. With this feature, you can search for flights to wide geographic regions (such as Anywhere, North America or Asia) and find the cheapest flights from your home airport to destinations in that region.

Once you’ve clicked the search button, you can then continue to filter the results for vacation preferences, including city, beach, family, honeymoon, foodie, skiing, scuba diving and more. AwardTool will then filter the results for destinations that fit these criteria.

If you are really serious about finding the best possible deals on award flights, you can click the Routes tab and then check the prices of any route in the world over a 90-day period.

This data can help you identify the best possible time to book an award flight to any destination on the planet so that you can get the best deal available.

AwardTool also allows users to search for hotel stays. One great feature of AwardTool is, when you search for hotel award stays, you’ll be shown the cash price for each stay as well as the award rate. That way, you can easily calculate how much value you’ll be getting for your points on each stay.

All in all, AwardTool has a ton of helpful features for both casual travelers and serious award travel enthusiasts, all of which are available for free. While you can upgrade to the premium version of AwardTool for $84.99 per year, everything you need to find a great travel deal is available with the free version (and it’s available at impressively high speed).

Point.Me

Another great award search tool for travelers who want help planning their vacation is Point.Me. First off, it’s worth mentioning that this tool searches for award flights only and doesn’t search for hotel award stays. Point.Me is primarily useful for finding flights if you’re not yet sure what your destination should be.

The reason this tool is great for planning your vacation is that you can select from a variety of vacation types, and Point.Me will display only flights to destinations that match your parameters.

For example, if you select the “Beach” option, enter the rest of your flight information (including your origin, type of flight, number of passengers, desired cabin class and travel dates) and click the “Explore” button, then you’ll be presented with a list of award flights to coastal destinations with beaches.

To search for a flight, enter a specific airport of origin. Then, choose to search for flights from that airport to Anywhere or to a more specific region (either a continent or a specific country. However, you can’t search for a flight to a specific airport. So, if you wanted to travel to Munich, you would have to search for flights from your home airport to Germany and then see if there are any available flights to Munich in the results.

One great feature of Point.Me is the map view, which allows you to easily browse destinations geographically and view award prices for each route. Plus, once you choose your region of destination and you switch to map view, you can toggle the Beach, Culture, Adventure and other tabs to see where each kind of a destinations is in your selected region.

There’s also a Standard version (which costs $129 annually or $12 monthly) as well as a Premium version (which costs $260 annually) of Point.Me. These paid subscriptions come with added features such as exclusive monthly destination tips, real-time award flight searches and step-by-step award booking instructions. A Premium subscription even comes with a points strategy consultation.

The free version of Point.Me definitely has all that you need to find a great award flight. However, if you’re interested in receiving tips and tailored advice on booking the perfect flight with points or miles, then signing up for one of these paid subscriptions may be a good idea.

Point.Me also has several other concierge services that you can pay for on a case-to-case basis (starting at $200 per case), including full-service flight booking, elite status and mileage runs, points strategy consultation and custom packages.

If you have something specific regarding award travel that you’d like consultation on, you may want to look into these services. However, it’s typically a better deal to sign up for a Premium subscription because it includes access to these consultation services.

The Point.Me platform doesn’t give users the option to book hotel award stays. So, if you’re looking to spend some hotel points, this isn’t the best tool for you.

Where Point.Me excels is in helping travelers decide on a destination based on the type of vacation they’re trying to achieve. If that sounds like your situation, then the Point.Me tool might be a great asset to you. However, if you’re looking to track prices and do more technical searches, then using other award search tools is probably preferable.

Seats.Aero

Seats.Aero is a powerful tool for discovering award flights. However, compared to most of the award search tools mentioned in this article, Seats.Aero is less beginner-friendly. Still, if you’re already familiar with how award flights work, Seats.Aero gives you access to a lot of data that can be extremely helpful.

To use this service, simply go to the homepage and search for flights by entering your origin, destination and departure date. You can also enter multiple origins as well as destinations if you wish to view a wider range of flight options.

Oddly, Seats.Aero allows you to search for one departure date, meaning you can only search for one-way flights through this award search tool. If you want to find a return flight through Seats.Aero, you’ll have to search for each direction individually. This can make finding a round-trip award flight slightly more complicated and time consuming.

You do have the option to search for flights over a range of departure dates by clicking the drop-down menu next to “Add +/-” and selecting the number of dates you want to search. For instance, if you choose to search for +/- seven days and set your departure date for the 15th, you’ll see flight results departing between the 8th (which is seven days before the 15th) and the 22nd (which is seven days after the 15th). With the free version of Seats.Aero, the maximum number of days that you can search is +/- seven days.

However, if you upgrade to Seats.Aero Pro, which is available for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, you can search up to +/- 180 days (which essentially gives you access to data for the entire year).

Seats.Aero Pro offers the ability to create alerts with advanced filters, receive SMS notifications, access the Seats.Aero private Discord channel and request new routes to be tracked. In general, most people will find that the free version of Seats.Aero provides everything they need. But, if you’re a frequent traveler, it might be worth it for you to pay for a subscription.

Regardless of whether you have a paid premium membership or not, you can use the Routes tab on the homepage to find data for specific routes available through each of the major frequent-flyer programs.

Simply click on your preferred loyalty program from the list and scroll down to find the route that you want to track. Once you click the “Find availability” button next to that route, you’ll be able to find award prices through that program for that route for months out.

If you click the Hotels tab on the top of the Seats.Aero homepage, you‘ll be redirected to the Rooms.Aero site, which is the company’s hotel award stay search tool. Likewise, the Rooms.Aero interface isn’t user-friendly, but the site does provide all of the features that you need to find a good award stay.

You can filter results by the hotel rewards program through which you wish to book your stay. Unfortunately, your options are limited to Hilton Honors, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy and World of Hyatt. Thus, using Rooms.Aero is a bad choice if you’re interested in booking award stays through other programs such as Choice Privileges or Wyndham Rewards, all of which are transfer partners of major credit card rewards programs and often offer good value.

Rooms.Aero also gives you the option to set a maximum number of points and to view all of your hotel options on a map view.

Roame.Travel

Another good award search tool that has a great user interface is Roame.Travel. This tool looks great and has a lot of data that can help you find the perfect award flight. Unfortunately, this tool displays results from significantly fewer loyalty programs than some of the other award tools mentioned earlier in this article.

Roame.Travel displays results from just six frequent-flyer programs unless you activate SkyView mode. These programs include Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, American Airlines AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, JetBlue TrueBlue, Qantas Frequent Flyer and United MileagePlus.

Obviously, that list excludes some of the best loyalty programs that consistently offer great value, such as Air Canada Aeroplan, Air France-KLM Flying Blue, British Airways Executive Club and others. Likewise, unless you activate SkyView mode, you won’t be able to search for flights for more than one day at a time.

However, by activating SkyView, you can view award flight results for up to seven days and from 14 frequent-flyer programs. Unless you’re specific about the program that you wish to use and the date you want to fly on, we recommend always turning on SkyView when using Roame.Travel.

To find award flights, simply enter your flight information, including your origin, destination, travel dates, preferred cabin class and number of travelers. Once you click the search button, a list of award flights that match your search query will be displayed.

From there, you can filter the results according to a number of factors, including credit card programs, frequent-flyer programs, number of stops, maximum cash fees and maximum number of points.

You also can click the “Save as Alert” toggle button if you wish to be alerted about award price changes on the route that you searched. This can be a great option if you want to wait to see if prices on a specific route drop before you book them. If you’re using the free version of Roame.Trave, then you can save only one alert at a time. However, if you upgrade to Friends of Roame (the premium paid version which costs $12.99 monthly or $109.99 annually), then you can save up to five alerts at a time.

Also included with a Friends of Roame subscription is the ability to search within a 60-day period, the ability to conduct multi-region searches and email support. Of course, you should be able to find award flights that match your criteria without a premium subscription. However, if you use Roame.Travel often, then it may be worth it to join the Friends of Roame program.

Roame.Travel also has a unique feature that you can access by clicking the Wallet tab on the homepage that allows you to upload your points and miles balances so that you can see all of these balances in one place. Unfortunately, Roame.Travel doesn’t sync with your bank accounts and rewards programs, so you’ll have to make all changes manually.

The Roame.Travel award search tool doesn’t give you the option to search for hotel award stays. So, if you’re looking to redeem hotel points for free nights, this isn’t the tool you should use.

AwardLogic

One other award search tool that is worth looking into is AwardLogic. This award search works in a fairly similar way as most of the other tools mentioned above. However, you can’t search hotel award stays through AwardLogic.

If you want to search for an award flight, enter your origin and destination, whether you’re flying one-way, round-trip or multi-city, the number of passengers and desired cabin class. You can also select your travel dates and your degree of flexibility (whether you’re willing to be flexible on your date up to one day or up to two days). Then, click the “Search” button to see flights that match your parameters.

From there, you’ll be shown a list of flight results that match your search query. Unfortunately, the free version of this service is almost useless as AwardLogic won’t allow you to see the frequent-flyer program through which to book your award flight without paying a fee (either $4.99 daily, $19.99 monthly or $199.99 annually).

When you search for a flight in the free version of AwardLogic, you’ll be able to see the cheapest, quickest or earliest available award flight that matches your search query as well as the number of points or miles that it’ll cost you. Plus, you can even see if that award is bookable with a certain credit card rewards currency (such as American Express Membership Rewards points or Chase Ultimate Rewards points.

However, you won’t be able to see which loyalty program you need to use to book each flight. So, for example, you might be able to find out that you can book a specific award flight with Amex points, but you won’t know which Amex transfer partner you have to use.

Additionally, without purchasing the premium version of AwardLogic, you won’t be able to filter the results for number of points/miles required or for specific credit card programs or frequent-flyer programs.

However, if you do sign up for the premium version of AwardLogic, you’ll be able to see which loyalty programs have award space, filter results by specific programs or price ranges, increase the flexibility of your date to three days (instead of two days with the free version) and get access to other premium features, including step-by-step points transfer and booking instructions, exclusive offers and flight alerts.

All in all, many of the free versions of the award search tools mentioned above have all you need to find the right award flight. And the paid version of AwardLogic doesn’t provide much more than the free versions of some of these other tools. So, the free version of AwardLogic is relatively useless, and if you’re willing to pay for an award search tool, you’re probably better off paying for the premium version of a different tool.

Which Award Search Tool Is Best?

When it comes to determining the best award search tool, it depends heavily on your personal preferences as well as which kind of award search you’re trying to conduct.

Certain award search tools, such as AwardTool and Point.Me, are great if you don’t know what your destination will be yet because they recommend destinations based on categories such as beach, city or adventure. On the other hand, Seats.Aero may be the best award search tool if you’re just looking for access to a lot of award flight data. However, this platform won’t help you much if you’re trying to choose which destination to go to.

Overall, we suggest that AwardTool is probably the best award search tool available for free. That’s because this tool offers a fairly user-friendly interface, allows you to filter destinations based on categories, gives you access to award data from all of the major loyalty programs, and you can view award price trend data over long periods of time. Many of the other award search tools offer some of these same features, but AwardTool is the only one that incorporates all of them in one free platform.

With any of these award search tools, we recommend using the free version at first. In almost every case, it will have the features you need to find a good award, especially if you’re willing to conduct multiple searches.

The Bottom Line

The world of points and miles can be complicated with all of the different rewards programs, each program’s unique list of partners, peak and off-peak pricing and all of the other factors that contribute to the pricing and availability of award travel. However, using an award search tool can greatly simplify this process.

Using these tools, you can quickly compare award prices for a certain route across nearly every rewards program and across several different dates to determine the best way and the best time to book that particular award. If you don’t know exactly where you want to travel yet, many of these award search tools can also help you select the perfect destination.

In general, AwardTool is the best all-around award search tool in our opinion because of its combination of functionality, user-friendliness and wide range of data. However, other award search tools shouldn’t be ignored as each one has its own unique advantages and applications.

It’s also worth noting that because no award search tool is perfect, you should always also conduct your own award search if you want to ensure that you get the best possible deal on your award flight.

Still, these award search tools are a great resource. By using one or several of the award search tools above, you should be able to redeem points or miles for the perfect vacation and save yourself a whole bunch of money.